The Legal Data Intelligence Podcast with David Cowen (Episode 5)

Over the years, the volume, velocity and variety of data have exploded. As new technologies like AI become an integral part of legal workflows, the need to have a defensible, efficient and strategic process to tackle legal data challenges becomes paramount. In this episode of David Cowen’s podcast, Careers and The Business of Law: The Legal Data Intelligence Series, he sits down with Chris Acosta, Director of eDiscovery Resources at Morrison & Foerster.

In this freewheeling conversation, Chris succinctly captures the challenges associated with the glut of data, and the exciting opportunities at the intersection of technology and the law to find solutions to these nascent problems.

Listen to the full episode and read a partial transcript below.

David Cowen: How do you explain Legal Data Intelligence to somebody who doesn't know anything about it?

Chris Acosta: It complements other models that we've been using like EDRM. It's a great framework that legal teams can use to optimize their work and drive better outcomes in different scenarios. Instead of being reactive, it gives us a chance to become strategic business partners. Legal Data Intelligence is a comprehensive framework that you can adapt to different legal use cases. And really, there are two aspects of it: ROT Data and SUN Data. ROT which stands for Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial data. And SUN Data which stands for Sensitive, Useful, and Necessary.

If we were building a house, I would be looking for a general contractor. If I were building a legal house, I'd want somebody that came from e-discovery and or legal operations, because they have probably the most day-to-day hands-on experiential knowledge with the data, and they understand data intelligence and how it impacts the other stakeholders and the business.

A lot of those skills and capabilities are transferable. It comes down to being naturally comfortable with the data, understanding how to build metrics, understanding the strategic vision, and having the operational chops to fundamentally reimagine how legal services are delivered, and the value you can create not only for legal teams, but even for the business overall.

I see new roles being created at the convergence of privacy, security, governance, compliance, legal ops, and e-discovery.

You're exactly right. I think the lines have blurred and blended in a lot of those different practices. On the discovery side, you had to take all that into account on a daily basis. And on top of that, when you’re in a leadership role, you are actually looking at the business side of it besides just the security, compliance sides and everything else that goes with it. I think e-discovery is unique in that you are dealing with data, with very process-oriented workflows, and you are trying to leverage technology while trying to work with people in a variety of different scenarios. So it's not just that we are dealing with civil litigation. We are going into other areas such as DSARs , cross-border matters investigations, data mining and trying to lift the valuable data.

If you would like to become involved with the Legal Data Intelligence project, please write to us at info@legaldataintelligence.org